Malkuth, the Kingdom, is the tenth and last sefirah, the point at which the whole descending flow of the Tree of Life arrives in the created, material world, the physical universe, the earth, the body, the realm of ordinary experience. It stands at the foot of the central Pillar of Equilibrium, receiving through Yesod all that the nine sefirot above pour down, and it is the sphere in which the divine, having emanated through every stage, becomes fully manifest and tangible.
Malkuth is also identified in Kabbalah with the Shekhinah, the indwelling divine presence, the feminine aspect of God that dwells with creation and, in exile, shares its suffering; the reunion of the Shekhinah with the higher sefirot is a central longing of Kabbalistic devotion. Its divine name is Adonai ha-Aretz, the Lord of the Earth. Because Malkuth is the world we inhabit, it is both the lowest sphere and, paradoxically, the one closest to hand, the throne of the Kingdom and the ground beneath the feet. The sefirah belongs to the doctrine of the ten emanations named in the Sefer Yetzirah and developed through the Zohar and the later Kabbalah.
Sources The ZoharTraditionally attributed to Moses de Leon with Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and PracticeAryeh Kaplan